I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that everyone who likes AHS also likes Revenge. And Glee. And The Walking Dead. If I am correct in that assumption, I have come to the conclusion that my finger will never be on the pulse of the average American and my career as a screenwriter will never, ever, take off -- I will be doomed to write unproduced indie dramroms forever.
Leaving that dramatic note aside, I would like to enjoy most things. I just can't. I'm like that anal professor in that popular MG/YA spec-fic series who finds failure everywhere and won't shut up about it.
Sorry, bloodfiend, can't jump on that wagon.
I don't really expect anyone to ever agree with me, so there's no need to apologize. No one does. At least, not about television shows on this forum. I just like venting and I haven't yet joined another forum filled with cynical people like myself who hate almost everything running except Breaking Bad and Mad Men.
The show is the lovechild of every popular urban legend/horror story out there (or a good darn bunch of them). It's pretty obvious that Murphy is being overly intentional in his heavy-handedness.
I'm surprised to find that being heavy-handed and obvious are suddenly quality traits in horror... suspense... parody... whatever this show is. In that case, the Wayans brothers are geniuses.
Look, I know his heavy handedness is intentional. Dude couldn't be subtle if he tried. Dude's writing is less subtle than Mr. Herbert on Family Guy.
I just don't think being obvious as fuck
all the time is a good thing.
What else is there to really do with horror anyway? The genre burnt out in the late 80s and pretty much 99% of what came after is utter and complete drivel.
That's not exactly true. There's still good, new horror being made in pretty much the same quantity as it was before.
The genre is so formulaic nowadays that you can't really enjoy it for the thrill anymore.
Creepy music.
Psycho shower music.
Oh, it's just the cat! Hee hee.
The same can be said for just about any genre. Action. RomCom. Science-Fiction. DramCom. Indie. Historical Adventure. Thriller. A lot of it is bad. A lot of it has always been bad. Most of it goes over the same standard, old tropes over and over again. Ask any screenwriter who reads recent scripts. Horror is no different, except that the bar for good horror, apparently, is much, much lower.
Sure, the Japanese are doing some seriously messed up shit, but I'm pretty much horror'ed out when it comes to anything that claims to be "new," "exciting," and "really, truly scary."
I wouldn't say there's nothing new and exciting out there, horror wise. If you're a fan of the genre, there is. Pan's Labyrinth. The Orphanage. Let The Right One In. The Crazies. The Woman in Black. The Devil's Backbone.
Suspense wise, since, apparently AHS isn't even horror now, we have many, many good suspenseful mysteries that I don't even have to name. Before M.Night royally fucked himself over, even he was doing alright with the genre.
Horror isn't dead. It's evolved. I don't even follow the genre that closely, but the 80's didn't burn it out any more than the 80's burned out pop music or action flicks. Audiences are just clamoring for boring Paranormal Activity sequels and movies about exorcisms and slasher flicks to get press like the Chris Brown wannabes and Shia LeBouf. God knows why.
But, American Horror story revels in its decadence.
If the genre were declining, I'd agree. It certainly is contributing to it's (non-existent) downfall.
It's not supposed to be new stories with fresh ideas (not possible at this point, imho). It's a full-fledged mockery of the genre in such an in-your-face kind of way, that I'll never be able to watch a horror movie again without thinking, "Ryan Murphy did it better and he wasn't even trying."
Is it a parody or a serious show? I would really like to know. Am I supposed to be sitting on the edge of my chair or am I supposed to be laughing? Because it doesn't really mock the genre. Mocking the genre would require... I don't know, skill. Sometimes, it wants to be serious. Sometimes, it just kind of veers into B-movie territory. It's kind of like saying Not Another Teen Movie is a serious homage to John Hughes's movies, then backtracking to say it's a parody or a satire or mocking the tropes or whatever we want to call AHS.
I mean, really, Ryan Murphy is doing horror better without trying? Human Centipede: Full Sequence was a huge PoS, not fit to wipe an ass with (no pun intended if you've seen the movie) but that mocked the slasher genre better than this mocked the horror genre. And
that wasn't even trying. This is listed as a Horror/Drama/Mystery everywhere I look. We can't say on one hand that it's trying to mock the genre by handling every single trope badly then on the other hand say it's a serious homage to horror and that it's suspenseful and creepy and yadayadayada.
Do I watch this like Desperate Housewives and revel in the cheesy bad extremeness? Or do I take it seriously, like a Del Toro film? It's got the same bad tonal changes as Glee -- not knowing when it wants to be serious -- giving the audience a chance to cry and shudder -- and when it wants to be funny, leaving me high and dry. You're either Shaun of the Dead or Dawn of the Dead. You can't be both.
Next, someone is going to try and convince me that Twilight effectively mocks the vampire genre and that they'll never be able to watch a movie with vampires without remembering how Stephenie Meyer did a much better job without even trying.
And I liked 10% of Twilight, not going to lie. But I would never pass it off as anything other than what the creator intended it to be -- a romance (and it's a bad one). Not a satirical glance at what romance has become and what will be accepted by the average American woman as a sexual fantasy. Not a psychological drama bent on unfolding the mind of a psychopath. A romance. I don't even think it's a good example of YA romance, but that's what it is. And there's nothing wrong with that. But let's not pass off a banana for an apple. Certainly not a rotted banana for an apple.
Murphy says his main goal is to scare viewers. From his mouth:"I went from
Nip/Tuck to
Glee, so it made sense that I wanted to do something challenging and dark. And I always had loved, as Brad had, the horror genre. So it just was a natural for me."
So, if that was his intent, he failed. I think he'd be an awesome writer for Family Guy or The Cleveland Show. Over the top gags are his thing. He's very, very good at that. But if you're never able to watch a horror movie without thinking Ryan Murphy did better without even trying, I'd say you probably aren't watching very good horror movies. I'd say they're most likely the horror equivalent of For Colored Girls. Or Glitter.
Yes, Murphy does a spectacular job writing bad B-movies (well, mini-series thing). I will never be able to watch a bad b-movie without thinking how Murphy did a better job. I will fully admit that AHS is better than the remake of The Thing, the remake of Psycho, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Devil, and Paranormal Activity 3. Mocking bad b-movies is not that hard. Really.
If he'd taken on a real task by effectively mocking good classics, I'd be able to get down with this show. Instead, he applies b-movie tropes to good movies. (Damn, him and Perry really are brothers from another mother). It's like taking tropes from White Chicks (a Wayans movie) and using them to mock Bamboozled (a Spike Lee movie) -- or write a homage to Bamboozled and the exploitation genre. I'm still lost on what AHS is trying to accomplish.
Suspenseful mash-up homage or satirical mockery. I just can't say. I mean, X-Files did the exact same thing to sci-fi ten years ago. And, for the most part, it did it well.
Jehhillenberg is right. Yet again. As she is in many things. She is Yoda and I'm pretty intent on listening to her.
I'm not sure Yoda is the best comparison to draw if you're trying to say she's right. Yoda was pretty much wrong about everything in both the original trilogy, and the prequels.
I'd go with Dumbledore, or at the very least, Gandalf. Hell, I'd even go with Madea in terms of "mentors who are right most of the time".
But I'm not attempting to convert anyone. You like what you like. I just happen to think Murphy is a horrible over the top writer who makes offensive shit 40% of the time (and no one ever calls him on it), yet, he's loved for some unknown reason that I wish I could discover. Once, just once, I'd like for someone to explain how Murphy's writing "style" (forgetting plot points, rewriting characters, forgetting arcs, forgetting characters, retconning in the middle of the show, changing tone) is a good thing. If it is, I guess I've been doing things wrong for a very long time.
This review pretty much sums up what I think of this show.
Murphy and Falchuk have talked to the press about how the show was inspired by their love of '60s and '70s psychological horror/thriller films like "Rosemary's Baby" and "Don't Look Now," and that they want to really explore this particular family unit. But the Harmons never seem like a family; just three vaguely-connected people who occasionally cross paths so they can yell past each other. And whatever thematic points the writers want to make gets lost in the rush to assault the viewers' senses with the next whacked-out idea.
Ben is a therapist, and in the second episode he treats a woman who has a recurring dream about being chopped in two in an elevator accident. Ben goes on a long riff about what the dream represents, and asks, "What do you think might be shut down in you?" The patient replies, "I don't know. I think I'm just afraid of being cut in half."
That's "American Horror Story" in a nutshell. It has pretensions of depth and ambition, but really all it's about is whatever cool thing Murphy and Falchuk wanted to do next, hurled at the screen with such reckless abandon that none of it works.
I think I'm going to watch Twin Peaks, now. I'm hoping that doesn't disappoint me, too. I mean, it's not like I'm looking for things to hate.
The one good thing I will say about AHS:
I liked the daughter's suicide/death arc. That was the one unique, emotional thing that actually gripped me -- that scene in the tub. Too bad I saw it coming, Sixth Sense style. Even still, I thought it was pretty good.
And I will conclude this extremely long comment by saying this: I understand what it means to make a parody/mockery/whatever that's so over the top, you look at movies in the genre with a new eye. But I don't think Murphy achieved that. It wasn't even his goal. Murphy did not write a Blazing Saddles or a Deathtrap. He did not write an X-Files. He didn't even write a Scream (okay, okay, I liked AHS more than Scream). And if he intended to do so, he failed.
I'm not even going to entertain the notion that AHS is in the same league as Se7en or Memento -- or even Drag Me to Hell.